Written by Emily Moosbrugger | Photo Courtesy of Touch Girl Apple Blossom

Every week, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by the Austin-based band, Touch Girl Apple Blossom. Emily also got to chat with the band after a March gig in Asheville, in which they discussed their new record Graceful, released earlier this month via K records.

About their playlist, the band shared;

“Music.. the acceleration of the heart-situation. A bird’s feather floating in the wind could land anywhere, but it landed right here in my hair. Nothing makes me feel more lucky. I call my baby on the telephone when I’m down and he sings a song to me. Nothing makes me feel more lucky.”

Listen to their playlist HERE!

The trip Olivia Garner sings about on “Vacation” the third song on Touch Girl Apple Blossom’s Graceful is nothing like the album’s title suggests. Springy riffs twirl around jangly, bouncing guitars setting the bubbly indie-pop backdrop for nasty sunburns, fighting in public and long nights staying up worrying. Garner’s saccharine vocals float through the thick layers with a fluttery lightheartedness as the dreadful scenes unfurl, before she sings: “Well I tried/ Couldn’t find out/ Just how to be Graceful.” Her cool delivery holds a hint of giddiness, making what would be a casual shrug feel more like a quiet triumph. 

Touch Girl Apple Blossom is a four piece band based in Austin, who recently shared their first full-length album Graceful. They formed after Garner visited El Paso for a show where she met drummer Charles Powell, who she joined that same night for a karaoke performance of “Drive” by the Cars. The pair parted ways for another several years after that, and in the meantime Garner was getting to know bassist Dustin Pilkington through events he organized in the Austin scene. 

One of the recurring shows he hosts features bills composed entirely of bands playing their first-ever gig – for a while, every time he put one of these together he messaged Garner to ask when she was planning to finally start a band of her own. So when Garner decided to start reaching out to potential bandmates, she knew just where to look. “He was the obvious answer,” Garner said of Pilkington. Soon after, Garner, Powell, Pilkington and guitarist John Morales all convened in-person for the first time at the first Touch Girl Apple Blossom practice. 

In their earlier days, the songs were mostly written solo by Garner and Morales in their homes and then taken to the other members to be filled out and polished. Since the release of their EP in 2023, their process has become much more collaborative; members will share loose snippets of ideas in their group chat to be brought to practice and pieced into full songs as a group. “When we wrote the EP it was kind of just John and I, and they helped us bring it to life, and then the record was like our actual project together,” Garner said. 

Similar to Garner’s revelation on “Vacation,” the band found letting go of expectation would push them into new, more earnest territory. “We wanted to be a certain kind of band, and then with this album, it’s kind of like we wanted to write Touch Girl songs,” said Powell. On “Heart-Go”, the first song the band wrote post-EP, and their most unabashed, heavy-rocking to-date, stuttering feedback and the fast-paced rumble of Powell’s drums lay the groundwork for an opening line that encapsulates the band’s growth in a new direction. “The pen got tired of writing down these things to say to you/ Scratching out, scribbling around the truth.” 

In their shows, an imperfection is never treated as a limitation, but a chance to play with the energy in the room – an opportunity approached with a charm and excitement similar to bringing a newly broken bone to school and letting your friends cover your cast in doodles. “I’ve started

to scream when I get nervous because people will just call and respond. You know, people will just do it back, which is sort of a perfect distraction from the song. People will just fixate on that and before you know it the song’s over and you got through it,” Garner said. In a similar way, the band opens the song “Dream From an Eyelash” with a chorus of ‘ahs,’ a tactic they newly established as a way to make that part of their set more comfortable. “That’s a song that I didn’t want to play for a long time because it’s hard for me to hit that note right off the bat,” Garner said. “So they generously have started to just sing it so we can sort of practice before we have to start.” 

Throughout Graceful, the band’s first release in which lead vocals are traded between songs, each songwriter’s distinct, sentimental voices complement one another, stitched together like devotional pieces of patchwork. On “The Springtime Reminds Me Of…” Garner swirls in and out of a daydream, bouncing from one starry-eyed musing to the next before slipping away cunningly, leaving us to spiral into the dreaminess ourselves: “I must go, I can’t say no/ The world keeps turning/ The springtime reminds me of…” But where Garner leaves room to fill in the gaps, her bandmates draw us in a little closer, sketching their memories in the adoring details; a clock ticking at the pace of a heartbeat, the extra space left in a lover’s coffee for cream. On “Back ‘N Forth, Garner’s hopeful chants and swooning “la’s,” are sprinkled throughout a nostalgic picture of “the back and forth of a tireswing,” dancing around the lines with the weightless rise and fall of the image they describe. 

On many of these songs, these wistful imaginative spells are the narrators’ greatest strengths in the face of uncertainty. The song “Tell” opens with the line, “Make enough to eat/ Most importantly I still have those same dreams,” opening the album with the fearless spirit that is carried throughout. The energy on Graceful, an album brimming with brisk, dancey pop is sustained by an unflinching optimism, a belief in holding onto those dreams and letting go of the rest. The dreaming comes to a head on the penultimate track, “I’m Lucky I Found You,” a slower outlier on the album expressing a deep gratitude for a long-anticipated love over a sweet bed of acoustic riffs and warm cello accompaniment. The verses recount a long series of changing seasons and unanswered questions that dissolve at the euphoric exclamation: “love is back and it’s in my arms!” It’s a revelation bringing fresh clarity, sung with the gushiness and giddy confidence of someone who knows that whatever comes next, they won’t be facing it alone.

You can listen to Graceful out now, as well as snag a copy on vinyl or CD via K Records.